The Pitch

The cast are all residents of, or people that somehow wound up on F1998. There, they met a strange Maxwellien ranting and raving about some problem with the core further up the tower. Officials of course denied this and think the Maxwellian is crazy, but for some reason or another, he's managed to convince you, or at least sucker you into helping him get from here to there. It'll be a long walk.

I believe Julian wanted to play the Maxwellian, so I'd like to avoid taking any others if possible, since setting wise it'll be weird to have multiples in the party. Other than that feel free to make whatever, though try and make it so there's no more than one Dantali or Alloci - since having doubles of either of those would be sort of weird too.

Logs I Guess

Setting

The Past

Long, long ago, the world used to be just like any other. That all changed with the Apocalypse happened. No one quite remembers how it started or why, just that strange, all consuming miasma and bizarre eldritch monsters suddenly appeared one day and began to ravage and destroy the world. All was not lost though, as a group of engineers quickly formulated a method to deal with the probably, and enlisted the aid of many different groups and people to help build it. Before the world could be entirely swallowed by the deadly miasma, a large building - the Tower of Eternity - was constructed, reaching high above the land, miasma, and most monster. And so a small portion of the world was saved from total annihilation.

The Present

That was all over a thousand years ago, though. Since then the survivors have managed to continue living in relative safety into the massive, sky piercing tower. Much of the tower - especially the parts people live in - are in fact so high up in the sky that the ground can't even be seen out of the scant few windows due to the constant cloud line. All floors below F500 have more or less been abandoned - they've been taken oven by monsters and turned into nesting ground and generally aren't worth the effort of trying to clear out as most of the population is near F2000.

Things are more or less stable now. There are monsters inside of the tower (it was impossible to keep them all out), but in general they're regulated to the unpopulated floors, or sections of floors with no residences, as the various floor-towns are regularly patrolled and defended. Only every couple of floors tends to have a floor-town inside of it, with most of the rest of the tower being a dense, sometimes-mechanical-sometimes-organic forest or maze of sorts, and only hunters or maintenance really needing to worry about leaving them for the most part. People generally don't travel much, but it's not completely heard of.

There's a single cargo elevator that runs along side the north end of the tower. Usage of it is strictly regulated and prohibited. If you're not part of one of the major companies dealing in logistic, a noble offering bribes, or a Maxwellien with emergency assistance notices, you're probably not getting onto it. Instead there are stairs randomly and haphazardly spread out among each floor leading up or down. Why they're not all in a single, centralized location as a stair well is anyone's guess. Best guesses are that it was remnants from worries about invasions during the apocalypse.

The Races

The races are a little bit different inside the Tower of Eternity than they are in SEED's implied setting. A little history on them and their place in the tower are outlined here.

Alloci Elves

Thousands of years ago when The Apocalypse happened, the great minds of the Alloci devised an ingenious plan to save what was left of the world - they would build a tower so high that it would escape the effects of the Apocalypse entirely. They worked tirelessly for years, overseeing the designing and construction of the Tower of Eternity immediately after the Apocalypse and eventually ushered in what remained of the world population, effectively saving everyone. They seems especially ready for the event too - Alloci society had always placed a great deal of importance on scholastic merits and engineering in particular, not to mention an ample stock pile of supplies just laying around their country. A lucky twist of fate for them, and the rest of the world.

After the construction of the Tower was completed and what remained of the world began to migrate in, the Alloci positioned themselves as nobility of sorts - they were the ones that designed and developed the one thing that prevented everyone in the world from dying, after all - and would likely need to continue to oversee it for the rest of eternity. No one really objected to this - they had the knowledge to keep things running smoothly, were good overseers, and by in large were fair and just.

Things were good for the first few centuries. But slowly, ever so slowly, the Alloci because to be less than fair, just, and lost their staunch practicality and morality that had guided them for so many years. They became lazy, corrupt, decedant. More like the nobility of human kingdoms in the old world, rather than the saviors and protectors of this new world and refuge that had created. The Alloci of today have very little in common with the Alloci of old - they're still intelligent enough, but there's much less emphasis placed on a proper education and engineering practices, even more so since the Maxwellian arrived in the tower. But they've become petty and spent more time on pointless politics and power struggles amongst themselves, while squandering the resources of the tower and living lives of excess. Popular opinion of the Alloci gets worse and worse every day, but there's not much they can really do about it. After all, they control not only the elevators, but also the heart and core of the tower itself.

Dwarves

The Dwarves were the first ones that the Alloci consulted with about plans for the Tower of Eternity. Frankly, their plans were impossible - through purely physical means. The Dwarves, however, were masters of strange, arcane arts, being dark, shadowy spirits themselves. After being summoned to the Alloci a price was paid, and a pact was formed - though legends, myths and rumors that persist into the modern day can't quite agree just what that price was - and the Dwarves began to lend their expertise and talents to the Alloci on the more unreal parts of the Tower of Eternity's construction.

Back in the days of old the Dwarves used to be more ethereal, less defined - more shapeless shadows than people, really. But when they were invited to take up residence in the tower along with the others upon its completion, they began to take on more humanoid shapes, and wear clothing as they would, to better blend in with the rest of society. Today, it's only a vague distant memory that the Dwarves ever used to be more spirit than person - despite being mostly wispy shadow still, they're solid and more or less mortal, They eat food just like anyone else. Heck, they even have glowing eyes now, and open mouths with speaking. Things used to be really weird when it wasn't clear where exactly their faces were (they still have a tradition of constantly wearing head gear of some kind as a work around to this old problem), though that's not something anyone alive remembers dealing with anymore.

Dwarves are the non-Alloci race most likely to be encountered on the upper floors of the tower where the nobility resides, though they're still fairly rare - back when it would have mattered, they weren't really attached enough to real care about positions of power within the strange society that was being formed, much to their descendants laments. Most of them these days live with the rest of the humans and driftin as common folk. As for how beings that used to be literal shadow spirits came to have descendants…? Well, that's all just part of becoming mortal, really. They don't exactly talk about how they reproduce, and when asked about it mostly just laugh dismissively. It's definitely not the same way the other races do, though.

Hundred

The Hundred was another race important in the construction of the tower. Though it's often forgotten now, they were originally an artificially created race - specifically developed to handle building up the walls and outside of the tower. Designed and grown for strength, dexterity, and most importantly, an increased resistance to the miasma that was brought about the by Apocalypse that would have killed the other races. While not outright immune to it, it takes several hours of exposure to the miasma before ill effects start to take effect, rather than minutes. The resistance is a little lower with each passing generation, likely due to general lack of exposure, but a Hundred is still your best for dealing with Dantali breaches into the tower.

After the construction of the tower was completely, the Hundred were set free from the obligations of their origins and given free reign to live as they please with the rest of the races. Due to their inherent strength and resistance to miasma, it's not uncommon the see Hundred join up as part of the Defense Force that protects civil order within the tower and defends against rogue Dantali incursions, but just as many choose other walks of live, from engineers to farmers. They're more or less like like everyone else… just bigger.

Humans

Humans were the lucky ones. While a few of them had emergency fall out shelters and the like built into the ground, they were rare and few and far between. It's likely they would have been nearly wiped out had it not been for the Alloci and their plans for the Tower of Eternity, which mercifully had included plans to bring them in as workers and save many of them as well. While it's speculated that some of humanity does still exist in the fallout sheltered that had been built underground, those in the tower have had no contact with them since a few years after the Apocalypse, as refuges moved higher and higher into the tower to avoid potential ground breeches.

In the old world, most sentient beings had been humans. But after the Apocalypse, their no more numerous than any other race really (or well, Humans, Alloci, Hundred, Driftin and Dwarves, anyway). They're all over the tower, doing anything that needs doing - they're still a bit better at adapting to new and unforeseen environments or situations than most, but that trait's become a fair bit less pronounced since the entire world became contained within a single tower and a multitude of races began to frequently intermingle.

Driftin

The miasma did strange things to those that were caught in it for extended periods of time if they didn't simply die. The people that came to be known at Driftin were originally human, but those that took time to reach and enter the tower. To most caught in the miasma it was fatal, but a moderate number of people survived, and were mutated by the miasma as a result. Usually not different enough to not still look humanish, but enough to most definitely not be normal at first glance - ears like a dogs, tails like a foxes, eyes like a cats, slightly longer fingers and claw-like nails, pronounced kines and the like. The mutations of most tend to be no more pronounced than that, and most only have one or two features altered rather than looking like proper human-animal hybrids like the Hundred, and sticking towards those of small to medium sized mammals, as opposed to the Hundred's larger, more predatory animal and bird like features.

To this day no one's still really quite sure how the Driftin mutations work - two driftin with the shame characterizations (ie cat ears) don't always result in offspring with the same mutations, sometimes having children with more claw like hands and tails instead, or something completely different like a dog's tail. There is a tendency for the mutations of children to be similar to their parents, though.

If-ys

Along with the miasma, strange ill defined otherworldly monsters came with the Apocalypse. While most gradually shifted into more tangible and perceivable monsters in time, there were a small group that changed in other ways. More specifically, the became more like the Humans, Elves, Dwarfs, and the Hundred and Mutants. The creatures slowly lost traits that made them eldritch and became more… people like. The forms they took were crude at first, but over time they got the hang of it. Legs, arms, hands, bodies, heads. They figured out how to emulate sounds, and then language, and eventually began to speak with the other people of the world. When the other monsters begin to infiltrate the towers, so do did these strange imitations of the world's races.

They didn't continue fighting, though. Something within them changed when they begin to take the form of people, and communicate with them. They could no longer remember what they were or why they were here, and much like the dwarfs, over time they too became mortal. It took many, many decades for the residents of the tower to begin to accept the If-ys - the name these new creatures eventually gave to themselves - but they did eventually (after all, there were many strange peoples living in the towers now). Granted many were still suspicious of them - there's still some lingering tensions in the air event to this day, even if most tend to ignore them or pretend they don't exist - but by in large the If-ys are a normal part of the tower now.

Part of the change in the If-ys was that they lost a great deal of their ability to shift and change as they please. It's not entirely lost, but it is a great deal limited now, compared to what it once was. In the modern world If-ys are only capable of changing their form after they've have a full nights worth of sleep (the change begins after they've slept for a number of hours), and they're limited strictly to humanoid shapes, and can be no smaller than a typical Human teenager, or larger than a grown Hundred. Most tend to avoid looking too much like the other races to avoid potential confusion, though of course some (particularly the younger ones that still think it's funny) take their forms deliberately to confuse. Generally speaking this means opting for skin or hair colors beyond what the others are capable of, or taking on small animalistic characteristics that elude Hundred or Driftin. Using the guise of sprites and fairies has fallen into particular fashion of late.

Familiars

"Familiar" is a catch all term used to refer to child sized golems, automatons and drones with highly advanced AI. No one's entirely sure how they were developed, simply that during the early days of the construction of the tower they showed up shortly after they dwarfs were brought on board and at about the same time development of the Hundred was finishing and began doing a lot of the finer bits of construction, primarily running cables and powers lines through out the building.

The core of any Familiar is its black box - to this day how they work remains a complete mystery, and they've yet to be replicated. In the event that a familiar is destroyed they can be built a new body and, so long as the black box is unharmed, transferred into it. The process takes a number of weeks in order for it to fully integrate with the new housing though, so most familiar tend to avoid doing so unless it's necessary.

For whatever reason, they wound up sticking around in the tower after it was completed, frequently working as maintenance and repair assistants to the Alloci, but just and often working as general gofers for the various small towns and cities spread through out the tower, doing just about anything asked of them in exchange for a small bit of compensation. Familiars hate being idle with nothing to do - but they absolutely loath doing someone else's work for free.

Maxwellian

The Maxwellian are strange, golden organic robots as tall as Hundred. They appeared out of the blue about a decade or three ago - few at first with their numbers increasing as time went on - claiming to be the successors of the familiar's and that they would be taking over the tower's maintenance from now on. This was initially met with a great deal of skepticism from both the Alloci and Familiars themselves, as they had no knowledge of any such plans and the Mawellian seemed to be as in the dark about their true origins as anyone else. Eventually though, the increasingly slothful nature of the Alloci got the best of them, and they agreed to let the Maxwellians do as they pleased. To this day, nothing bad has happened from the decision, other than the frustration of some familiars who still work with them.

By in large the Mawellian's do not interact with the other races terribly much, aside from when they make sporadic trips into town to resupply for food and spare parts, and perform check ups on the public utilities. Generally speaking, each Maxwellian is assign to a single floor-city and the floors surrounding it, and they never venture from it, stick to keeping everything running smoothly in their assigned sectors.

Dantali Elves

Another breed of elves - the Dantali. Unlike the Alloci, they had no hand in the Tower's construction, nor did they seek refuge in it like the humans. None of the surviving records make any mention of the Dantali until some centuries after the construction of the tower was completed. The first mention of these strange, pale elves notes that they breached the tower with explosives, while operating some strange blimp like device with oddly shaped wings and wearing something akin to shimming silver diving suits with large helmets, and attempted to take over. It didn't go especially well and they were eventually routed and retreated… but nearly all mention of the Dantali since then have been during similar such encounters. There's a lot of theories on who the dantali are and what they want - the prevailing current theory is that they're allies of the humans from the fall out shelters intent on taking resources from the Tower - but no one's really sure what their deal is since they're adamant on not talking about it during their incursions.

There's a very small population of Dantali living out in the tower - not as a secret hidden cell or anything but out in the open, claiming to have grown weary of the assaults on the tower with no foreseeable ending to them in sight, and seaking refuge from their own kind in order to find some measure of peace. They were of course naturally met with suspicion and kept under close guard under a single floor for many decades, before eventually, warily allowing them to intermingle with the rest of the tower's inhabitants. While they're technically no longer pseudo prisoners or under official suspicions, there's still a lot of distrust for the general population and people tend to avoid interacting with them as much as possible.